ch it forms a part;
and the campaign can only be understood when we know the political object
which it was designed to serve.

A battle is no more than an incident in a campaign. However decisive in
its immediate result upon the field, its value to the general conducting
it depends on its effect upon the whole of his operations, that is, upon
the campaign in which he is engaged.

A campaign, again, is but the armed effort of one society to impose its
will in some particular upon another society. Every such effort must have
a definite political object. If this object is served the campaign is
successful. If it is not served the campaign is a failure. Many a campaign
which began or even concluded with a decisive action in favour of one of
the two belligerents has failed because, in the result, the political
object which the victory was attempting was not reached. Conversely, many
a campaign, the individual actions of which were tactical defeats,
terminated in favour of the defeated party, upon whom the armed effort was
not sufficient to impose the will of his adversary, or to compel him to
that political object which the adversary was seeking. In other words,
military success can be measured only in terms of civil policy.

It is therefore essential, before approaching the study of any action,
even of one so decisive and momentous as the Battle of Blenheim, to start
with a general view of the political situation which brought about
hostilities, and of the political object of those hostilities; only then,
after grasping the measure in which the decisive action in question
affected the whole campaign, can we judge how the campaign, in its turn,
compassed the political end for which it was designed.

The war whose general name is that of the Spanish Succession was
undertaken by certain combined powers against Louis XIV. of France (and
such allies as that monarch could secure upon his side) in order to
prevent the succession of his grandson to the crown of Spain.

With the various national objects which Holland, England, the Empire and
certain of the German princes, as also Savoy and Portugal, may have had in
view when they joined issue with the French monarch, military history is
not concerned. It is enough to know that their objects, though combining
them against a common foe, were not identical, and the degrees of interest
with which they regarded the compulsion of Louis XIV. to forego the
placing of his grandson upon t